Chapter 27 – Problems in Parenting

The school moves quickly to arrange testing for Mac, and a couple of weeks later I leave a clear afternoon for another meeting with his school. Once it's over I collect Daisy from the gym and head home, pulling up to see Angela sitting on the porch with Holly while the boys play in the thin winter afternoon sunshine. Zeke and Bram are digging in the gravel on the driveway, and Mac and Noah are riding their bikes up and down the packed dirt hills we'd started making into a BMX track way back before we lost Rosalie. It's just another thing that's fallen by the wayside in the darkness, another thing that I've found it hard to care about in the face of loss. But watching their grins as they sail down one hill and up the other, and seeing Daisy sprint over to the porch to grab her bike and join her brothers, I promise myself that I'll finish it off for them by the spring.

"How did the meeting go?" Angela asks as I approach.

I sit on the porch steps. Holly gives me a smile and I hold my hands out, snuggling her close for a moment after Angela hands her over. "Hey little jellybean." I lay the baby on my thighs, tickling her dimpled cheeks until I'm rewarded with another sunny smile and a surprisingly hefty kick in the belly. I take hold of her feet and kiss her toes and then look back at Angela. "They had all his assessment results back and it all fits in with dyslexia. I mean, they hedged that – he's very young, he hasn't been at school long, emotional trauma can affect his learning, blah blah blah…but odds are that it's at the root of his problems."

"I'm sorry," Angela says sincerely. "It's good that you got an answer, but…I'm sorry."

"Yeah well," I mutter wearily. "What are you going to do? It is what it is."

There's a long silence, before Angela says, "What are you going to do? I mean, now that we know, what do we do about it?"

"There are ways to teach him, different approaches they can take…I don't know." I look down at Holly, who is concentrating fiercely on getting her own fingers into her mouth. "They kept telling me that there is loads they can do to help him. His teacher is only first year out of college and doesn't have any experience with it so she's going to work with the special education coordinator to develop some kind of education plan. At this point they want to keep him in his classroom, hopefully with an aide for part of the day, but there's a lot of paperwork and things to organise. They're going to do all that and then call another meeting about where we go from there. I don't know, they talked so much about a whole lot of stuff and I didn't really understand it all…"

My voice trails away, my heart aching as I once again stumble into the deep, bottomless longing for Rosalie. The sorrow that she's gone, and a bitter, furious rage that I'm left to live this life and deal with everything alone.

Because she would be better at this than me! If Rosalie were still here Mac would still be just as dyslexic, but she'd be here to deal with the professionals at school. She'd be able to understand all that jargon they talked, she'd be able to go online and read the research and find the best and most up to date methods of teaching him, she'd be a knowledgeable and active part of formulating a plan and helping Mac be the best he can be and achieve the most he is capable of…she'd be everything that I can't be.

"It sounds like the school are going to do the right things for him," Angela says. "It's great that they're being so proactive."

"Yeah, I guess. But…damn, doesn't the kid have enough to deal with already? I know all too fucking well what this is going to be like for him, and it's shitty! Sure, they can find other ways to teach him and he can learn, but…it's always going to be difficult and he's always going to have to work harder than the kid next to him to get anywhere near the same result."

"Is that why you were in special ed classes when we were in high school?" Angela asks a little hesitantly. "Do you have dyslexia?"

"Yeah. I was diagnosed when I was sixteen and apparently my dad – my bio dad, obviously, not Carlisle – has it as well. So Mac having problems doesn't exactly come out of nowhere. But I don't know that that makes it any easier," I finish softly.

Angela hugs her knees. "It's sometimes harder to watch our kids struggle with something than it is to deal with it ourselves. And seeing our own…I don't know…flaws? issues maybe?...reflected to us in them isn't easy either." She smiles ruefully. "I was the most fearful little kid, wildly over-imaginative, always anxious and terrified about all kinds of things. I grew out of it – mostly – and then I had Micah and he was exactly the same. Afraid of the dark, afraid of monsters under the bed, afraid of strangers and thunder and scary dreams and loud noises and costumes and masks …can you imagine what he was like on Halloween?! Of course I loved him and did whatever I could to be patient and understanding and teach him to be brave, but it was sometimes really hard to see something I'd worked so hard to defeat in myself being such a big thing for my son."

"Yeah," I say hoarsely. "That's the worst part of it. I see myself in him, and feel like…it's all my fault. It's my fault, but Mac's the one who's going to suffer for it."

"It's not your fault though; you can't think of it in that way. Mac's just who he is and that's that. And he won't struggle in the same ways you did, because you're here to guide him and make sure he doesn't," Angela says. "Mac's dyslexia is being recognised and addressed ten years earlier than yours was, and that's going to make a massive difference. You can lean on the school to make sure he gets all the services he needs from now in kindergarten all the way through to his senior year if necessary. You're in the perfect position to help him because you really understand what it's like."

"I suppose that's one way to look at it," I say with a half-hearted laugh.

There's a long silence before Angela sighs and says reluctantly, "Well, I don't want to add to your stress, but I need to talk to you about Noah too."

"What about him?"

"A note came home from school about head lice in the kindergarten room and…"

"Oh, not that shit again!" I burst out. "Daisy had lice about five fucking times last year, it was like some kind of Biblical plague! Well, there's about half of an industrial sized container of lice killing shampoo left in the basement, I'll go down and get it…"

"No, no, he doesn't have lice!" Angela interrupts. "I checked, and I didn't find any sign of lice or nits, but what I did find is…you know how he pulls on his hair when he gets anxious? Well, it's worse than that - he's pulling it out."

"What?"

"He's got some bald patches. I'd never noticed because the longer hair on top covers it up, but I couldn't miss them once I was combing through it looking for lice. It's actually pretty bad." She bites her lip. "Did you know?"

"No." I say shortly. "He washes and brushes his own hair, so…Noah!" I yell across the yard. "Come here for a minute!"

He rides his bike over, braking hard and grinning at me breathlessly. "Did you see me going over the bumps?"

"Yeah, you're doing good. We'll have to try and finish the track once spring comes round. Can I have a look at your hair?"

A flash of unease crosses his face, but he drops his bike by the steps and unclips his helmet. "How come?"

"Angela said she checked you for lice…I want to check too."

"Okay." Noah swings his helmet by the strap and bends over the baby lying on my lap. "Hi Holly-Golly-Lolly."

Noah inherited Rosalie's hair, the thick, silky mane made up of a hundred different shades of blonde mixed together to form a rich gold, as beautiful to touch as to look at. But I'm not thinking about Rosalie now, as I comb through his slightly sweaty locks. Noah's hair is overdue for a cut, and the extra length and fullness has contributed to concealing the areas of pink skinned scalp above and behind his ear that he's plucked bald.

"Do I have lice?" Noah twists to look up at me. "I hate that shampoo."

I swallow hard. "No, you don't have lice. But you…did you know that you've been pulling your hair out?" I run my fingers gently through his hair, over the patches of bare skin. "Here, and here…"

"Well, sometimes hair falls out," Noah mumbles evasively.

"Yeah…but not usually enough to make you bald. Not when you're six."

Noah's lip trembles. "I didn't mean to."

I pull him closer in a hug. "You're not in trouble. I'm just…I want to understand what's going on. I don't want you to hurt yourself, and it must have hurt to have pulled out so much hair."

"I don't know." Noah tries to climb on to my lap, and I hastily pass Holly over to Angela to make room for him on my thighs. "I don't mean to. Sometimes my hair just comes out in my hand. And sometimes it hurts, but then I stop."

I wrap my arms around him. "So, you're not doing it on purpose?"

"No." Noah shakes his head. "I don't want to be bald! It just happens all by itself." Even as he's talking I see his hand rise as he unconsciously reaches towards his hair.

I close my fist around it and see the lumps and scars marking my knuckles, the result of the compulsive, anxious chewing I've been doing for most of my life. My heart aches. "Okay buddy," I say, deliberately casual. "I'll have to think about this one…you can go back and ride your bike again."

Noah clamps his helmet back onto his head and grabs his bike, racing across the driveway and back towards Mac and the BMX track. I watch him go for a moment, and then drop my head into my hands.

This is too hard.

"It'll be okay." Angela scoots across the porch until she's sitting on the step beside me, and her shoulder bumps against mine. "Noah will be okay."

I shake my head. "He's six years old and he's balding!"

"Hair grows back." Angela smiles at me sympathetically. "I know it's a shock though, I was pretty taken aback when I discovered it. I'd noticed that he tugs on his hair when he gets a bit anxious, but I had no idea he was taking it to this extent. But I googled hair pulling and hair loss in kids just before, and hopefully we can help him. It's a new thing, isn't it? I mean, he's never done this before?"

"No, not like this," I say. "As you said, he's always had a habit of yanking on his hair, but he certainly wasn't doing it this hard and this often until…since Rosalie died."

Angela nods. "You should call your dad and get him to check Noah out, but it's probably an anxiety thing. Catching it early probably gives you a better chance to break the habit and replace it with a less damaging way of dealing with his distress."

I fish my phone out of my pocket and call Carlisle, reaching his message bank. "Hey Doctor Carlisle," I say, striving for lightness. "I was wondering if you'd be able to make a house call today? I want you to take a look at Noah. He's…well, I'll explain when you're here. He's all right, but I need to talk to you."

"It's nice that your dad is a doctor," Angela says. "Pretty convenient when you need one!"

I laugh raggedly. "Yeah, it's good at times…all those mystery rashes that could be heat or could be meningitis, and the is-this-a-cough-or-is-this-tuberculosis dilemma that always seems to happen at 3am are much easier to deal with when you've got a paediatrician dad on call."

Angela giggles. "My dad had a line on praying for my kiddo's immortal soul and he cut me a great deal on a christening, but a doctor would have been a bit more helpful I think!" She sighs wistfully.

"You sound like you miss him," I say.

"I miss them all!" she says with feeling. "My dad, Micah, my mom; she's still here, but she's not really here, if you know what I mean. And even Patrick…"

"You've lost a lot of people," I say, adding cautiously, "Is Patrick Micah's dad? You've never mentioned him." Angela and I have talked a lot during the weeks she's been here, but mostly about the kids and food and household routines. This feels a lot more personal.

"Yes. My ex-husband." Angela is watching Bram and Zeke digging in the gravel, not looking at me. "The accident where Micah died…Patrick was driving. He broke his spine and leg and had a head injury, but he survived. The accident wasn't really his fault, but you know what grief is like – unfair or not I blamed him for his part in it and resented him for surviving when Micah didn't. I shouldn't have…but I did. Our marriage was doomed from that point."

"You don't keep in touch at all?"

She shakes her head. "Not anymore. It's hard sometimes, because without Patrick in my life I don't have that very real link with my memories of Micah either. But there was too much bitterness and anger and hurt…we're better apart and we've both moved on in our own ways. But there are still days when…well, you know how it is." Angela pushes her glasses up on her nose and smiles at me tiredly. "Sorry. I guess I'm just having a bad day."

"It happens," I shrug. "And you have reasons. You lost your kid, and your husband as well in the end. Then your dad, and your mom - that's a lot of loss, and it sucks. You don't get over that in a week, or a month…or even a lifetime." I grimace. "I guess I'm not cheering you up all that much, sorry!"

Angela chuckles ruefully and snuggles Holly a little closer. "That's okay. I'm okay really. It never goes away of course, but for the most part I've accepted things and I'm at a stage where it's…well, not happy, there is still so much sadness, but…peace? To an extent?"

"I wish I was there," I say morosely. "But I can't…I hate the way I am. I hate the way I feel."

The anger. The rage. The furious resentment of what my life has become and the obsession over the injustice of it all. The loneliness, because I lost my best friend and no one can fill the hole that her absence leaves in my life. The bitterness because the love that lit up my world and warmed my heart now brings only pain. The howling, bottomless well of loss and grief and longing, and the sorrow that cuts like a knife and never, ever, seems to end…

It's changed who I am. Sometimes I don't even recognise this version of myself, this resentful, morose, embittered person who weeps more than they laugh. This was never me.

Angela has lost just as much though. She's been through a similar hell and she's still going. Sitting on the porch in the winter sunlight and holding my daughter she offers me her strength, and the glimmer of hope that a future is possible. That one day, I won't feel this way.

"It gets easier," she says, like she's reading my mind. "Eventually. You won't ever be the same…but you'll find a way to live with it easier."

I look at her curiously. "Does it help? Being here with my kids, taking this job…has it helped? Or is it harder?"

Angela taps her lip thoughtfully. "It's…kind of both? There's so much about taking care of them that reminds me of being Micah's mom, and that brings up a lot of memories of when I was a mommy, and I miss that so much. That's sometimes hard. At the same time, I really do love taking care of kids. It's hard work, but they're so sweet and funny and interesting that it's really rewarding. I like being busy, and I like being needed. And your kids…they need someone. I know that what I'm doing here is worthwhile." She shoots me a quick look. "That's nothing against you. You're a great dad, and those kids are so lucky to have you. Really. I mean, I know what they've all lost and it's staggering, but you're holding their world together in a really extraordinary way."

"It never feels like enough though." I gaze across the yard at the boys. "And it's stupid, because Holly and the little twins don't even really realise what's going on and are basically unaffected by it and I hate that almost as much as seeing the big kids being so affected by it that they're acting out! There's just no way to win. Holly doesn't even know that she has a mother to miss, and on the other hand Noah's plucking his head bald with the stress."

"Poor Noah," Angela signs. "He's the most like Micah. He's older than Micah ever was, but the way he's so quiet and sweet and serious really reminds me of him…I think that's probably why I'm a bit down today. Seeing what he's doing to himself and realising how deep his anxiety goes is hard to take."

"You said you googled it- any ideas what we can do?" I ask.

"Well obviously anything we can do to lessen his anxiety is going to help. Distraction and redirection if we see him pulling. Apparently some people wear gloves, or band aids on their fingers, to make it harder to grip their hair. And it's a pretty extreme option, but you could always clip his hair really short to stop him pulling on it out of habit."

"He has Rosalie's hair," I say quietly, and after that we sit there in silence, watching the kids play as the shadows lengthen.